The presidential and vice presidential elections of 1960 were hotly contested. Jânio Quadros, a maverick politician who had governed São Paulo successfully, won the presidential contest at the head of the National Democratic Union (União Democrática Nacional; UDN), the largest conservative party. João Goulart, the vice president under Kubitschek and a member of Vargas’s PTB won the vice presidential race. The two politically divergent politicians took office on January 31, 1961.

The election of Quadros was hailed as a revolution by ballot, because anti-Vargas political groups controlled the presidency for the first time in three decades. Quadros took office in an atmosphere of popular expectation, but he was soon opposed by the Congress, where parties loyal to the Vargas tradition still commanded a large majority. Quadros responded by attempting to dramatically expand his executive powers, but his arbitrary and autocratic manner alienated many of his former adherents, and he failed to enact political reforms or measures to fight inflation. In international affairs Quadros was more successful. His foreign policy, which was applauded by ultranationalists and deplored by moderates, seemed designed to move Brazil toward neutral and communist nations and away from its traditional ties with the United States. He opposed inter-American attempts to censure Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba and promoted relations with the Soviet Union and its European satellites. On August 25, 1961, after less than seven months in office, Quadros resigned unexpectedly, alleging that “terrible forces” had worked against him. Congress promptly installed Pascoal Ranieri Mazzilli, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, as temporary president, because Vice President Goulart, the constitutional successor, was then en route home from a state visit to China.

Brazil stood at the brink of civil war. Many military commanders and conservatives regarded Goulart as too radical to be entrusted with the nation’s highest office, although the great majority of civilian political leaders upheld his constitutional right to the presidency. The war minister, Odílio Denys, emerged as the chief spokesman of the anti-Goulart forces and demanded that Congress declare the office of vice president vacant and hold new elections. Congress refused. In southern Brazil the commanders of powerful army and air force units defied orders from the capital and sided with Goulart, who arrived in Porto Alegre (in Rio Grande do Sul state) insisting that he was already president. Faced with the prospect of armed conflict, Congress and the anti-Goulart group in the military compromised: they agreed that Goulart could take office, but only as a figurehead. On September 2, 1961, Brazil adopted a parliamentary system of government and transferred most presidential powers to the newly created post of prime minister. The legislature made provisions for a national plebiscite on the parliamentary experiment, and Goulart was confirmed as president.

The legislative elections of October 1962 did not greatly alter the balance of political power; in essence, the results indicated that the electorate was either divided or ambivalent regarding the administration’s reform proposals. Goulart seized the opportunity to lead the opponents of parliamentarianism in demanding a quick return to presidential rule. Brazil held a plebiscite on January 6, 1963, and, by a margin of more than five to one, the national electorate gave Goulart full presidential powers. Goulart, however, was subsequently unable to garner enough legislative votes to pass his proposals, and the government’s new plans for economic and social development did nothing to restrict inflation, which reached alarming proportions. The currency dropped to one-tenth its original value, the cost of living tripled, and the growth of the gross national product, which had been rising by 6 to 7 percent yearly, was brought to a complete halt.

Military intervention and dictatorship

As the situation grew more desperate, the administration and its critics further repudiated one another. Goulart identified himself increasingly with the ultranationalistic left and surrounded himself with left-wing advisers, whereas military officers began to sympathize more openly with the moderate and conservative opposition. Goulart sought to neutralize the armed forces by frequently reshuffling the command structure and by developing a personal following among noncommissioned officers and enlisted personnel. Many military officers and opposition political leaders, convinced that Goulart was planning a leftist dictatorship, began counterplotting in 1963 in different parts of the country. Governor José de Magalhães Pinto of Minas Gerais state and Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of staff of the army, emerged as the chief coordinators of the conspiracy.

Goulart requested congressional authorization for a state of siege, which would have enhanced his powers, and when Congress refused he appealed directly to the people for support. At a mass rally in Rio de Janeiro in March 1964, he instituted a controversial agrarian reform program and nationalized various privately owned oil refineries. Later that month his administration refused to suppress a strike by naval enlisted men; the opposition deplored that inaction, because it considered military authority and discipline to be the last check on Goulart’s alleged ambitions. On March 31, 1964, Magalhães Pinto proclaimed a rebellion against the government by the civil leaders and military forces in Minas Gerais; he was joined by key politicians and by most of the armed forces. On April 2 Goulart fled into exile, and Congress declared his office vacant; Ranieri Mazzilli was again designated interim president.

With the fall of Goulart, power effectively passed to the leaders of the rebellion, who instituted sweeping political changes. The commanders set out to restore economic and financial order, eliminate what they perceived as communist infiltration, and purge corrupt and subversive elements; however, they also desired to retain a modified form of representative government. On April 9, 1964, they combined these goals in the First Institutional Act, which greatly amended the 1946 constitution. The executive was granted temporary authority to remove elected officials from office, dismiss civil servants, and revoke for 10 years the political rights of those found guilty of subversion or misuse of public funds. Congress then followed the lead of the senior military commanders in awarding the presidency to Castelo Branco on April 11.

During the following six months, the regime arrested thousands of people and abrogated the political rights of hundreds more, including union and government officials and the former presidents Goulart, Quadros, and Kubitschek. Congress retained the power to debate and amend—but not reject—proposals submitted to it by the executive.

The rule of Castelo Branco

The military regarded Castelo Branco’s term as a transitional period during which the quasi-military administration would enact sweeping political and economic reforms before it again entrusted the nation to a popularly elected government. Castelo Branco and his allies agreed on economic and social goals, but they disagreed on the means to attain their ends. The president wished to achieve reform through legislation while permitting various political activities; however, civilian and military extremists wanted to dissolve Congress and suspend all political parties until the military regime could consolidate its power.

The quarrel produced a crisis in October 1965, when opposition candidates in the key states of Minas Gerais and Guanabara won gubernatorial elections by substantial majorities. The extremists interpreted the results as a great setback for the government, and they demanded that Castelo Branco annul the two elections. When he refused, they plotted a coup, but Marshal Artur da Costa e Silva, the war minister, intervened and persuaded the dissident leaders to keep the peace in return for Castelo Branco’s promise to embrace the military’s extremist reforms.

On October 27, Castelo Branco signed the Second Institutional Act, which suspended all existing political parties, restored the president’s emergency powers for the remainder of his term, and set October 3, 1966, as the date for new presidential elections. The regime then created an artificial, two-party system composed of the government-sponsored National Renewal Alliance (Aliança Renovadora Nacional; ARENA) and an opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (Movimento Democrático Brasileiro; MDB). However, the MDB refused to nominate a candidate for the presidential election, which was run by the ARENA-dominated Congress, and Costa e Silva, the administration’s candidate, won the uncontested race.

A government-appointed commission subsequently drafted a new constitution, and Castelo Branco in December called an extraordinary session of Congress to approve the document, which was promulgated in January 1967. It incorporated much of the military’s program and confirmed the expanded powers of the executive and the central government, but it also allowed the president and vice president to be elected from a single ticket, reduced the presidential term from five to four years, permitted military courts to judge civilians charged with violating national security laws, granted the president authority to issue emergency decrees without consulting Congress, and denied Congress the right to delay any legislation requested by the executive.

The Castelo Branco administration employed emergency powers to contain inflation and revive the flagging economy. It limited and regulated sources of credit, restructured the tax system and collection procedures, and imposed wage and salary controls. The government also invested heavily in hydroelectric power and the transportation infrastructure. The administration achieved many of its goals, such as reestablishing Brazil’s international credit rating, reducing inflation, and helping to increase the gross national product. Every major sector of the economy was expanding when Castelo Branco left office, although unemployment remained a problem.

Administrations of Costa e Silva, Médici, and Geisel

Costa e Silva promised to humanize the military government, but he did not depart markedly from the course set by his predecessor. His administration rejected petitions for a general amnesty, resisted proposals to amend the new constitution in order to restore direct elections, quashed attempts to form a second opposition party, and suppressed student disturbances. However, the government faced little serious political opposition, in part because its economic achievements mollified the populace.

The political situation deteriorated rapidly late in 1968. Costa e Silva, facing a resurgence of public and congressional criticism, seized emergency powers. The Fifth Institutional Act, issued on December 13, suspended all legislative bodies indefinitely, authorized the executive to rule by decree, and provided the legal basis for a new purge of political critics.

In August 1969 Costa e Silva suffered a stroke, and the government was run by the ministers of the army, navy, and air force until October, when General Emílio Garrastazú Médici was selected as the new president. The government again held federal, state, and municipal elections in November 1970; Médici’s ARENA party was the clear winner in most contests. Still, antigovernment demonstrations continued, and some insurgent groups gained attention by kidnapping foreign diplomats in Brazil.

In 1971 Médici presented the First National Development Plan, which helped to increase the rate of economic growth and to develop the Northeast and Amazonia, especially by means of road construction and redistribution of land. Brazilians, distracted by their newfound economic prosperity, seemed willing to tolerate political oppression and evidence of human rights violations. An electoral college was created in 1973, and in January 1974 it elected the ARENA party’s General Ernesto Geisel as president.

The 10th anniversary of the military coup was celebrated by lifting the prohibition on political activities of 106 leaders of the former regime, among them Kubitschek, Quadros, and Goulart. The Fifth Institutional Act, however, remained in force. The MDB demonstrated unexpected strength in the congressional elections of November 1974, gaining several seats in the Senate, and in the 1976 municipal elections the party pulled almost even with ARENA.

In April 1977 President Geisel dismissed Congress when it failed to pass judicial reforms that he had requested. He then used the emergency powers of the Fifth Institutional Act to institute those reforms and other electoral and constitutional changes, which included provisions for the indirect election of state governors and one-third of the federal senators and the increase of the presidential term to six years. The number of members of the Chamber of Deputies was to be based on the total population of the states instead of on the number of registered voters, and constitutional amendment could be effected by an absolute majority of Congress rather than the two-thirds vote of two successive sessions formerly required.

Transition to democracy

In October 1978 Geisel promoted a constitutional amendment that repealed the Fifth Institutional Act. The following month, his handpicked successor, General João Baptista de Oliveira Figueiredo, won the indirect election for president. Before leaving office, Geisel repealed all remaining emergency legislation, including the presidential decree (of 1969) that banished persons accused of political crimes. In 1979 Congress enacted an amnesty program that restored political rights to all who had lost them since 1961. In addition, a reinvigorated freedom of expression sparked lively political debate. In 1982 direct elections for state governors were held for the first time since 1965, and opposition parties won most of the larger states.

Brazilians also witnessed changes owing to a slow and profound economic transformation that made Brazil one of the major industrial nations of the world by the early 1980s, boasting the world’s 10th largest gross national product. At the same time, fully seven-tenths of the population was urban. The transportation infrastructure had expanded immensely, and road networks in particular reached out to previously isolated corners of the vast nation. New pressure groups, such as organized labour, played increasingly influential roles, and the social structure was more widely diverse and complex.

Still, Brazil followed well-delineated patterns in the 1980s. The few governed the many and enjoyed most of the benefits of society. The large estates grew in size and number as Brazil’s agricultural frontier moved ever westward and through the Amazon. The export sector still dominated and shaped the economy. Poverty characterized the lives of the overwhelming majority of Brazilians. Indeed, Brazil did not escape the economic crises shaking Latin America in the 1980s. Its foreign debt ranked as the largest in the Third World. The nation emerged from the period of military dictatorship with a triple-figure inflation. Nor had the military governments resolved the problems of illiteracy, malnutrition, and high infant mortality that plagued the majority of the people.

The return of civilian government

In another indirect election in January 1985, the broadened electoral college repudiated the military by selecting the candidates of the Democratic Alliance coalition—Tancredo de Almeida Neves for president and José Sarney for vice president—over the ARENA candidates. Neves died before he could assume office in mid-March, and Sarney was inaugurated as Brazil’s first civilian president since 1964. The period of military dictatorship ended, and Sarney presided over the inauguration of the “new republic” as a constituent assembly prepared a new constitution. Sarney had to confront enormous problems—debt, inflation, recession, unemployment, poverty, and injustice—which, in a larger sense, also challenged the nascent democracy.

After Sarney took office, rapid economic expansion took place as agricultural production rose and new economic and political policies were unveiled. The government’s progressive steps included legalizing all political parties, planning for direct presidential elections, and promising to distribute land to millions of landless workers and peasants by the year 2000. Sarney’s approval rating ran high as his government imposed the Cruzado Plan, an anti-inflationary program that included wage and price freezes and further fueled the economy. By the end of 1986, however, the government allowed price increases to slow the overheated economy. The rate of inflation immediately began to rise, precipitating massive protests against the government. The crisis took place just after a new, pro-government congress was elected (November 1986) and endowed with the task of producing a new constitution.

The constituent assembly began its deliberations in February 1987 as the failed Cruzado Plan ended. A year and a half later, on October 5, 1988, Brazil’s eighth constitution was promulgated. The document provided for a number of new freedoms, giving public workers (except military personnel) the right to strike and abolishing government censorship of art and literature. It also lowered the voting age to 16, designated presidential terms of five years, provided for a presidential election in November 1989, and prohibited the president from enacting laws by decree.

Brazil since 1990

Brazil’s old-regime elites and military continued to inhibit reform of the political system in the early 1990s, while the country’s voters became disaffected and cynical, and the political parties remained superficial, depending on personality cults rather than platforms that addressed specific problems. In the final round of the 1989 elections, Fernando Collor de Mello of the small National Reconstruction Party faced Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known by his nickname Lula, of the Workers’ Party (Partido dos Trabalhadores; PT), which presented an uncommonly well-articulated platform and a clearly socialist ideology. Collor nevertheless gained the support of most of the parties of the Sarney government and campaigned for economic growth, modernization, and eliminating government corruption and inefficiency. Although roughly one-fifth of the votes cast were abstentions or were nullified, Collor was declared the clear winner, and he took office in March 1990.

Collor’s government failed to improve the economy and was consumed by a corruption scandal in mid-1992. Millions of dollars from influence peddling had flowed into the president’s secret bank accounts. On September 29 the House of Representatives overwhelmingly voted to suspend and impeach Collor, and on December 29, minutes after the Senate opened the impeachment trial, he resigned. Vice President Itamar Franco assumed the presidency, marking the first time that the republic resolved a major political crisis without military intervention or arbitration. Investigations subsequently gained momentum and revealed further corruption at the state and federal level, including influence peddling, electoral fraud, and irregular banking procedures.

Franco had taken office with the support of both civil and military leaders, but he represented a political party whose ideology was markedly different from that of Collor and thus failed to inspire great confidence in the Brazilian people. Industrial production and the incomes of the overwhelming majority of Brazilians continued to decline, while the annual inflation rate accelerated drastically to nearly 2,700 percent; meanwhile, the country paid massive amounts of interest to service its foreign debt. Some proposed reorganizing Brazil’s political system as a way to emerge from the crisis, but a special plebiscite in April 1993 decisively rejected either a parliamentary or monarchical system; however, the following year Brazil adopted six constitutional amendments, including one that reduced the presidential term from five to four years in anticipation of permitting reelections (a question that was left to future legislative action).

Franco appointed as finance minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who put forth the Real Plan, a financial program partly inspired by a successful Argentine plan. The program stopped the government from periodically raising prices (a practice known as indexing inflation), introduced a new currency (the real) and an exchange rate that was partially linked to that of the U.S. dollar, and called for curbs on government spending. The Real Plan succeeded without severely limiting economic growth, and Cardoso’s resulting popularity encouraged him to run for president; many regarded him as a dynamic, modernizing leader in the mold of Kubitschek or Vargas who would guide the country through shifts in the global economy while simultaneously resolving domestic crises. Cardoso won the election by a wide margin over Lula, the perennial leftist candidate. Policies enacted during his first term (1995–99) permitted strong economic growth while lowering the annual inflation rate even more dramatically—from nearly 1,000 percent in 1994 to less than 20 percent within a year and nearly zero by 1998. The political parties backing Cardoso’s policies won a majority of the 1996 municipal elections.

Cardoso pushed through a law in 1997 that permitted presidents and governors to be reelected. His Brazilian Social Democratic Party formed a coalition with the Liberal Front Party, the Party of the Brazilian Democratic Movement, the Progressive Renewal Party, and several smaller entities to enact major fiscal and administrative reforms, notably the decision to privatize such government-owned enterprises as the Rio Doce Valley Company. Brazil’s economy slowed as a result of financial crises in Asia and Russia in 1998, but Cardoso retained his popularity, won reelection to the presidency (again over Lula), and saw his coalition retain a decisive congressional majority.

The government subsequently attained support from the International Monetary Fund, carried out additional fiscal and administrative reforms, and devalued Brazil’s currency by allowing its exchange rate to float rather than continue its near parity with the U.S. dollar. Inflation remained under control, in spite of fears to the contrary, and the military seemed unlikely to intervene in civil affairs in the near future. Cardoso appointed a civilian-led minister of defense, whose duties replaced those of the separate military service ministers. The governing coalition fragmented, however, as parties and politicians maneuvered for advantage in the October 2000 municipal elections. Still, a record harvest and robust economic growth allowed Cardoso to move forward with his programs.

Cardoso constitutionally was barred from standing for reelection in 2002. Lula emerged once again as the leading opposition candidate against government-backed José Serra of Cardoso’s Brazilian Social Democratic Party. On October 27 Lula easily defeated Serra, garnering 61 percent of the vote, and on January 1, 2003, Cardoso oversaw the first transition from a democratically elected president to a democratically elected successor in Brazil in more than 40 years. Lula’s win swung the country’s political agenda to the left as he became the country’s first president from a labour-oriented party. He moderated the rhetoric of the leftist platform he had presented in past elections, and soon after taking office he instituted austerity measures aimed at keeping inflation in check. Under his leadership, Brazil issued bonds in its own currency, instead of the dollar, for the first time. Employment and real wages rose. Major priorities of his administration included reforming social security, pension, and tax policy, combatting hunger and poverty, and enhancing educational opportunities, particularly for poor children. Lula’s presidency was plagued by scandals, however, which included party members soliciting bribes for public works projects and the use of undeclared loans to repay campaign debt. Many Workers’ Party officials were forced to resign.

In 2006 Lula won a second term as president in a runoff election against Geraldo Alckmin of the centrist Brazilian Social Democratic Party. Though Lula’s party was still scarred by scandal, the Brazilian economy continued to grow under his administration. He enacted reforms to increase public investment and control spending. Agricultural and mining operations persistently expanded, and foreign investors and major trading partners showed renewed interest in the country. However, many problems persisted. The country’s cities were ill-prepared to serve the needs of their growing populations, and, in spite of increased regional growth, Brazil’s economic opportunities and population remained heavily concentrated in two regions, the Southeast and the South. Brazil also remained embroiled in domestic and international controversies regarding threats to the Amazon rainforest and to forest-dwelling Indian groups such as the Yanomami. Moreover, landless groups continued to clamour for agrarian reform.

In June 2009 President Lula signed a bill legalizing the landholdings of nearly one million residents of state-owned land in the Amazon basin. The bill was an effort to control the decades-long land-grabbing situation in the rainforest, wherein settlers and speculators had occupied and exploited a vast area of public land without legal permission. Under the new law, farmers, loggers, and other settlers who occupied small areas received the title to their land for free; occupiers of larger parcels of land were required to purchase them. Environmentalists complained that the law would encourage extensive use of the land and lead to deforestation.

Unable to run for a third consecutive term, Lula endorsed his former chief of staff, Dilma Rousseff, as the Workers’ Party candidate in the 2010 presidential election. Her challengers in the October poll were José Serra, Lula’s Social Democratic rival in the 2002 election, and Marina Silva of the Green Party. Rousseff won nearly half of the vote, but, because she fell short of a majority, she and the runner-up, Serra, met in a runoff in October, which Rousseff won convincingly (56 percent to 44 percent) to be elected Brazil’s first woman president.

Shortly after taking office at the beginning of January 2011, Rousseff was confronted with one of Brazil’s worst natural disasters in decades: torrential rain created flash floods and mudslides that left thousands homeless and killed more than 500 in several mountainside communities just north of Rio de Janeiro. Hardest hit were the cities of Petrópolis, Teresópolis, and Nova Friburgo.